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Asked by shoaib2011 to Adam, Geoff, Rob, Sheila, Suzie on 23 Mar 2011 in Categories: General.
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Adam Tuff answered on 22 Mar 2011:
Do you mean why did all the apes evolve into humans, or will they all evolve into humans?
Animals evolve because every generation, only the strong survive – the genes of those are passed on, so every generation is slightly different. Over time monkeys and apes will evolve – but there’s nothing to say they will evolve to humans – they may look similar, but it all depends on their environments. Ether way, we won’t see the changes for millions of years.
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Robert Simpson answered on 23 Mar 2011:
Evolution can happen when animal species are forced to change by something changing in their environment. Maybe it suddenly gets cold or they run out of food. Those members of the species who happen to be blessed with thicker coats say, or better food-finding skills, will be the ones that survive and so the species starts to evolve toward that set of traits over a few generations.
Apes appear to have needed to stand up for some reason – perhaps to survive better when moving from trees to the plains. At some point they also started to get bigger brains and thus might a lot to do with apes needing to talk to each other somehow.
I’m not an anthropologist, so i don’t know much about this but it is really fascinating!
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Suzie Sheehy answered on 23 Mar 2011:
I’m not sure that I know completely as I’ve never studied this, but evolution means that over time traits that are beneficial for a species will win out over ones which aren’t. So I guess we evolved because it made us more likely to survive.
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